Mathematics in Movies

This is a collection of movie clips in which Mathematics appears. The site is now in HTML5 video
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Date: March 2006 - March 2013by:Oliver Knill
Department of Mathematics
Harvard University

Kevin Laird, a Beverly Hills school teacher talks about complementary angles, the most useful angle, the identity cos(x)2 + sin(x)2=1 and the Cartesian coordinate system. (Thanks to Aleksandra Ravas for the suggestion).

Using equations and statistics, baseball players are analyzed by Peter Brand. People are overlooked because of a variety of reasons: age, appearance, personality. Mathematics cuts right through this bias.

A sign on a mathematicians blackboard is changed, producing some headache later on, shortly before the mathematician dies (the theme of this horror movie is that people die after they watch a specific tape and then get a phone call). (thanks to an anonymous tipster).

What is the chance to draw an ace in a randomly shuffled card deck of 52. There is one chance in a million for a plane to crash and for it to crash, leaving you the only survivor out of how many -- 237 passengers? One chance in 237 million. Later in this convoluted thriller, a Russian Roulette variant appears, where 5 of 6 chambers contain bullets.

Arthur Jenson (played by Ned Beatty) talks to Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) about the only primal force of nature: money: "What do you think the Russians talk about? Karl Max? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, mini-max solutions and compute the prize-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments. Just like we do. "

Lots of meta talk and meta-meta talk and twisted logic in this conservation about the black bird. The statement "Mathematically correct" flagged the movie clip for this collection [I added the last remark to add a meta statement about this caption]

Its when they say 2*2 is equal to 4, it is not numbers, it is space. It is perfect space. But only in your mind. You can not draw perfect squares in the material world. [While this movie scene is harmless, the movie itself is definitely not PG13.]

On addition of income numbers and a sentence on teaching mathematics or geography. [As all BBC drama, this miniseries contains delightful acting and is built on a wonderful script quite freely using Elizabeth Glaskells original text. ]

Chaotic transport in the solar system. [ Actual documentary footage and interviews are combined to a movie. The interview is real and serious but the context makes it funny.] Thanks to Martin Lo to mention this to me. Lo appeared with two other mathematicians in this movie.

A brief moment sanity in this dark, dark movie when Lou solves some integrals. It is an extremely disturbing movie because the dark side of Lou Ford, the psychotic killer, is not visible. Why the police men Lou does some math in this scene is unexplained in the movie.

The Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Mechanics. The entire movie is a celebration of this principle starting with the dead/alive cat scene, unsharp boundaries singing and TV receiption, accepting mysteries, culture clashs, quantum tunneling between relationships etc,etc. One of the best Cohen brother movies. P.S. Can you spot the error in the blackboard computation in this scene? The computation error probably has been implemented also by purpose on a meta level.

The shadow determines the lattitude where the picture was taken. Compare the idea of Eratostenes to measure the shadows of a stick on different locations to get the radius of the earth. Thanks to Robin Zaruba.

Probably the most hilarious statement about dimension in the galaxy appears in the episode "Where silence has Lease": "Is the lack of a dimension a dimension by itself?" Negative dimension. Mathematicians have not yet come up with this idea, but mathematicians have used also some time to come up with negative numbers.

The sphere shows the third dimension. This movie was done at the animation workshop at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University. A production based on an idea by the American animator John Hubley (1914-1977) and directed by Eric Martin. (Thanks to Jamie Clements for the suggestion). The movie can be obtained here.

This brilliant movie is essentially about math only. A few famous math puzzles appear in this movie, where 4 mathematicians are trapped in a room where the walls slowly crush them. (Thanks to Evan Pellnitz for the suggestion).more.

Lecture on Wittgensteins pessimistic view on absolute truth followed by rather shallow sound bites: the beauty and harmony of numbers, the golden ratio, Fibonnacci, snowflakes and cancer, the secret meaning of numbers, the butterfly which flaps its wings to produce a hurricane which nobody can predict, logic and chance. Thanks to Detlev Beutner for the suggestion.

Beside the main theme of "sensitive dependence on initial conditions", there is a "run of Lola" in which she wins in roulette twice betting on the same number 20. The first time, the initial input of 100 mark is multiplied by 35. The second bet multiplies the now 3600 by 35 leading to a total win of 3500+126'000 = 129'500 has an element of Grass's Blechtrommel cry, mathematically related to "resonance". (Thanks to Mark-Willem Dogterom).

This comedy not only shows shots of Harvard college but also some rather tough math test problems: like Harriot's method of solving cubics (named after Thomas Harriot, you find Harriot's method for finding the three solutions x=e-b2/e,e,b2/e of the equation x3+3 b2 x = 2 c3here). Also Diophantine equations or integration problems appear in this test.

Surrounded by horror, forms of poetry, physics and math appear in a mad form too. Photojournalist: "this is dialectics, simple dialectics. It is very simple dialectics: 1 through 9, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can't travel to space. You can not go to space with fractions. What do you land on: on one quarter or 3/8th? What do you do when you go to venus or something. Thats dialectic. Physics. Dialectic logic is: there is only love or hate."

Riddle: Why is a raven like a writing desk? Carols own answer given in 1896: Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are very flat; and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front! (Thanks to Tania Moloney for the suggestion).

Fooling around with complements. The unbirthday. Its a small world, most people share an unbirthday. Carol might have been inspired by the birthday paradox: in a class of 23 the chance to have two kids with the same birthday is already more than 1/2. (Thanks to Tania Moloney for the suggestion).

Reciting a scene with Fanny, Edmund and Mary, mentioning the teaching of mathematics. As frequently done by Jane Austen, the scene is also a play in a play where the dialog refers to the actual situation. An other most delightful example (not displayed in this clip) is the library scene when Sir Thomas unexpectedly comes home from Antigua.

The ulam prime spiral appears. One could overlook that almost nothing connected with codes, physics or math does make sense in this movie, but that the blue picture of the Ulam spiral is fake is slightly annoying.

Bartender Cesar lectures Marius on mixing a picon-citron-curacao: one very small third of curacao, one third of citron, then a large third of picon. And to finish, a large third of water. (Movie suggested by Billy Carson)

Donald learns the Math of Billiards. It is a pretty good example, where reflections appear. The mathematics of billiards in a rectangle is already interesting and leads to questions in and basic Diophantine number theory appears because for most angles the billiard shots are not closed. The DVD can be obtained here.

The "Toricelli Void" appears in this Russian thriller. This is not a strict mathematical reference but mathematicians like Blaise Pascal have thought about vacuum. Vacuum is still an enigma and is related to the question what is space and time. The holy grail of physics to relate quantum mechanics with general relativity is also a mathematical problem. (Thanks to Nk P for the suggestion).